Redemption
by Naraya-Marjana
Summary: "Clint has made a mistake, and didn't even know it." A darker twist on the fate of one of my favorite characters.


How do you feel when you have lived your whole life under false pretenses? How do you feel when you have been stumbling for years from one mistake to another grief, never finding any rest? How do you feel when you realize that all you want is peace, but you have become one of those who do not deserve it?

Clint Barton knows the answers to those questions.

He has always been a bit shy, a little insecure and an all-around good guy. The only problem with that is – nobody knows. To everyone, even to his employers and co-assassins, he's an overachiever, with relentless arrogance and a tendency to get things done no matter the cost. He is remarkably successful – the fact goes hand in hand with him being still alive.

Yet he is something more than that. He is a perfectionist, an idealist. He has pushed himself beyond the realms of what human body and mind are capable of, and now his skills, his talent are nothing if not mystical.

What kind of a man does that? Who goes against his own nature, his own wishes to become something else entirely, a new man, who might set a standard no one is going to be able to measure up to for the next thousand years?

The answer in Clint's mind is plain. A man who has no choice.

In theory, everyone has a choice and Clint knows that. As he thinks back on the days of his past, he knows he could have chosen differently every single time – and would have ended up dead every single time.

It's the streak of stubbornness in him that keeps him going. He wants to be alive. He's not sure he wants to live – there is a subtle yet importance difference to his mind between being alive and living your life.

He wants to survive. Is that what ordinary folks call hope? Does he want to survive so badly because he believes a better life is waiting for him at some point in a distant, vague future? Does he truly believe the insanity inside and around him is going to end someday?

Does he? He doesn't know.

Something keeps gnawing at him. It's his conscience, his inner self, if he would be sentimental enough to use those terms. And do not think for a second that he is beating himself up because of his work. Well, he is, but that's not the issue here. Not exactly.

He blames himself for not dying sooner. He knows he's replaceable – any killer with enough training could do his job just as well. However, he is a master assassin, with supreme knowledge and skills that set him apart and make him the most valuable asset of any agency he has ever served.

Up until now, he has believed it is all somewhat temporary, a charade, a game that you play for as long as you have to, but he has been planning to eventually stop killing people for a living, and do something less strenuous.

He has been denying himself the privilege to do just that for years. He could have stopped working years ago. It bothers him that he hasn't.

He is still an assassin. He has not changed. He has a choice now, not one between life and death, but a choice between life and another kind of life. Why can't he stop? Why doesn't he change?

The answers trouble him and though he is trying to come up with a different kind of answers, he knows he will fail in the end.

What he does has become who he is. He has been killing people for so long he no longer feels any desire for ... what exactly did he want before, when he thought that his job was nothing but a setback, a time to gather resources before starting his own life? What did he want precisely?

He doesn't remember. He has always been a bit shy, a little insecure and an all-around good guy. But as he looks at himself now, he cannot see any of these things, nor remember any of his plans that would go along with those traits. Nothing in his life says that he is shy, he's most definitely not insecure, and as for being a good guy, well, he's given up on that a long time ago.

He's working for the government, sure. He's doing what's best for civilization, sure. He's called a superhero, okay. But none of that makes him a good person.

A good person would have let himself be killed before killing anyone, even an enemy. A good person would have tried his best to stay away from criminals, assassins, spies, and secret agents.

A good person would be an idealist who actually lived by his ideals. Or died by them more likely.

He has saved the world, true.

Is that enough for redemption?

Is it?

Clint Barton does not know.

He does know this. There is no better life waiting for him around the corner, and no power in the world can grant him a future free of insanity, of lies, of deceit.

He is the deceiver. He alone has done to himself what he has done, what he has been doing to other people.

He has killed his own self.

It did not hurt a bit and the fact does not bother him at all.


End file.
